Bob, we hardly knew ya

One of the most inspiring voices I had found among Clinical Pastoral Education supervisors was Bob Cholke of the Cooper Heath Care System. His voice had the firm and fearless sound of a prophet. In it, you heard the passion and conviction of one who believed in the work of the chaplain and of the chaplain supervisor. I was looking forward to hearing more of it and learning more from him. I expected him to become one of my key role models as my career moves forward.

Now, it turns out I won't have that chance. Bob has just passed away suddenly and unexpectedly.

Among Bob's survivors is his wife, Joanne Martindale, who is the Director of Pastoral Care at Ancora State Psychiatric Hospital in New Jersey.

My heart goes out to her and all who cared for Bob.

May his memory be a blessing.

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Information on Bob's funeral can be found here.

Kurt Vonnegut dies

NEW YORK TIMES -- Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Cat’s Cradle” and “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died last night in Manhattan. He was 84 and had homes in Manhattan and in Sagaponack on Long Island.

I just heard the news. I can't even begin to express the impact that Vonneget's works have had on my life. I think of him in the same way I think of Stanley Kubrick, another giant of post-World War II American artistic landscape: People call them dark. But I never saw them as dark. They may have used the tools of dark humor and satire to make their statements. But the point was the content of those statements. And I like how the Times characterizes that content -- as an urgent moral vision.

Kurt Vonnegut was a man of light, not dark -- a shining beacon of hope screaming that the world could be different and that we humans have been left with a choice of deciding whether the world should be a place of death and violence or a place of light and love. Kurt Vonnegut was asking us to choose life.

Choose life.